A curious bug: NETGEAR-Guest whether I want it or not!

Yes. Its broadcasting for me as I have a couple of devices that support 6Ghz. Non 6Ghz supporting devices will never see the SSID when enabled. Intel AX210 PCI wifi adapter and RAXE500.

Be sure you have 66Ghz supporting devices. 

Also try a factory reset and setup from scratch to help resolve issues if you didn't try that after FW was updated. 

That's quite fascinating.  I had not heard of selective visibility on SSID's before.  Well, sure enough, the 6Ghz SSID *did* show up for my desktop which is using the Intel AX210 Wi-Fi card.  I was able to connect to it at a whopping 2400mbs!  Actual throughput to the internet as shown with SpeedTest  only made it to a bit less than 1200mbs out of a potential 1450mbs, but that's fantastic for wireless!

Now I have another computer with EXACTLY that same Wi-Fi card and the same software drivers, but it does NOT see the 6Ghz SSID.  I'm trying to reason out the cause and still working some ideas.    Will update when or if I make progress!

Also, the erroneous NETGEAR-Guest SSID finally did go away on its own, though it took at least 15 minutes for that to happen.  Still an odd sort of behavior that just can't be working as designed. 😉

It's not selective visibility, rather it's hardware depending. If wifi adapters don't support the 6Ghz frequency, they will never see any 6Ghz SSID broadcasts. 

That the max speed rate you'll see from a AX210. That's is expected since its a 2x2 MIMO device. 

Possible faulty adapter. Be sure the advanced settings with in the adapters configuration has 6Ghz enabled. 

Ya thus GN SSID has been problematic over Orib systems for a while. 🙄

Hopefully not a bad adapter but I'm going to test if it might be the antenna.  I retrofitted this particular PC with this card   from a Wi-Fi 5 adapter, but I continued to use the original antenna.  Wi-Fi 6 connectivity works but 6E never has.  I'm going to install antennas specifically for the AX210 to see if that makes a difference.

Otherwise, all settings are the same between the PC that works and the one that does not.  I even set the preferred bandpass to 6Ghz but that didn't help.

Thanks,

Jonathan

Let us know how it turns out. You have one that works so we know 6E is working from the Orbi. 

Just want to close the loop on the wired-backhaul problem with satellite visibility.  Your suggestion to couple the router node to the 2.5Gbe switch in addition to the WAN port, did the trick.  Everything is working and visible as it was expected to be.

Sure, the documentation DOES show using the 2.5Gbe port on each of the nodes but it seemed more like a suggested way of doing it, when in reality is a REQUIRED method (for using wired backhaul).  

Many thanks!
Jonathan

Glad you got it working. Makes more sense to use the 2.5Gb connections between the RBR and RBS for sure.

Be sure to save off a back up configuration to file for safe keeping. Saves time if a reset is needed.
https://kb.netgear.com/000062080/How-do-I-back-up-the-configuration-settings-on-my-Orbi-WiFi-System
Enjoy. 📡

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jeburnett2022 wrote:

Hopefully not a bad adapter but I'm going to test if it might be the antenna.  I retrofitted this particular PC with this card   from a Wi-Fi 5 adapter, but I continued to use the original antenna.  Wi-Fi 6 connectivity works but 6E never has.  I'm going to install antennas specifically for the AX210 to see if that makes a difference.

 

Otherwise, all settings are the same between the PC that works and the one that does not.  I even set the preferred bandpass to 6Ghz but that didn't help.

 

Thanks,

Jonathan

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On the machine NOT seeing the 6GHz broadcast - go into the WiFi connections and forget the connection and then log back into it.    I have seen in the past that once it hooks onto the 5GHz band it will continue to grab the 5GHz band until you forget it and reconnect.

Understood, but in my situation, it's not just grabbing the old SSID, the newer 6Ghz SSID is not visible in the list of available networks.  This is now occurring on a second laptop that I installed the AX210 Wi-Fi card into which was also previously a Wi-Fi 5 device, which bolsters my theory that it is the antenna that is incapable of receiving the 6Ghz signal.  I'll be testing that out later today when I get a Wi-Fi 6 antenna kit in to try.

Will let everyone know how that goes!

Also something to be aware of, MS chose not to officially support 6Ghz and WPA3 in Windows 10. Though there are some historical drivers that were made available that would work for Windows 10 OSs. 

That's interesting because the problems I'm having are so far only on Windows 10 PCs, however some of what you say isn't true in my particular case, at least in regard to WPA3, which IS working fine.  I'm not using legacy drivers but instead the very latest Intel drivers for the Wi-Fi card.

Ok, early on WPA3 wasn't supported. MS may have fixed that. Not sure what the official support is regarding 6Ghz and Windows 10. Something you might check in to with MS about. Seems like though if your seeing problems across all Windows 10 platforms, this would be a key point to check into and the antenna support as well. 

I know on my one PC, dual boots Windows 10 and 11, my Intel AX210 6Ghz PCI adapter works on both, however I believe I had to use specific early version drivers to get Windows 10 working. 

One clue might be to look at the properties of the WiFi adapter. On the Windows Control Panel, open Network and Sharing Center.

Click on Change Adaptor Settings.  Right click on the WiFi adapter. Select Configure, then the Advanced tab.

My Windows 10 laptop (with an 'ordinary 5G WiFi adapter') has entries for Wireless 'mode' and (farther down the list) for 'Preferred Band'.

If the WiFi adapter in the PC supports 6G WiFi, there should be some mention of 6G in the Advanced tab.

On both of my PC's not seeing the 6Ghz SSID, I have indeed set the preferred band to 6Ghz.  That did not make the 6Ghz SSID to become visible as an available network connection.

I'm holding out hope it's the antenna and I'll be testing that soon!

OK, I've been able to test if the new antenna was the solution and sadly it was NOT!

Which led me to do a lot more research through about 2 years of conflicting advice.

Does   Microsoft allow 6Ghz on Windows 10?    Apparently not any longer, but in the early days of 2021 they did.

From Intel's perspective, the drivers they publish work on both Windows 10 and Windows 11, but apparently Microsoft doesn't want 6Ghz to be used now and they've rigged Windows 10 to not allow (without any information messages either) it to connect or even see a 6Ghz SSID.  By the way, as best I could find, Microsoft has gone radio silent on this topic.

But there IS a way to get around their shenanigans!

Seems there were changes made to the Intel AX210 drivers after version 22.45.1.1, published Nov 28, 2021, that allow Microsoft to disable that feature.  But if you can install 22.45.1.1, you CAN see the 6Ghz SSID from Windows 10.

The information I used that led me to this solution and the old driver was at this link:  Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6E AX210 can not connect to wifi 6E 6 GHz at WIN10 - Intel Communities

So, what I have now is a 6Ghz only connection to the Orbi and Windows 10 is reporting a 2.4Gbps connection, which is double what I had when connected to the 5Ghz link prior to this change.

The only damper on all of this is, it really didn't help.  Running Speed test on the 5G I was able to get about 500Mbps even though my ISP is providing a bit more than 1400Mbps.  When I joined the 6Ghz band, despite the rate Windows reported is double, the Speed test is only approaching the mid to upper 300 Mbps.

So, after all of this, I'll probably revert back to 5G, but I'll leave it this way for a few days to see if there any changes.

With regards to the older Intel driver, there are some bugs/limitations that inhibit some status info that Windows presents (like channel numbers) and it's even possible that the poorer performance under 6Ghz is actually due to driver defects from way back when.  Intel's current driver version is 22.190.0.4 and this version running under Windows 11 has no issue seeing the 6Ghz SSID.

Hope this helps others!

Ya I believe thats the drive that I have loaded on my Window 10 PC with the 6Ghz adapter. I haven't tried speed testing in a while. I'll check this out again. 

Ya MS is great for sheanegans for sure and going slight. Shame they don't allow it on 10. But there pushing Windows 11 now. And that's more shenaegans as well with there limitations on PC HW support. I had to mod the install on one of my PCs to make it work on a well capable PC. 

So there we have it. 🙄